Today we had a field trip to the local University to learn about HIV/AIDS and there was a fiftyish year old guy there that was HIV positive and he was talking about his growing up in school and he said that he envied our generation because we are much more open than back in his day.
He sayed that back in his day (which is still sorta true – at least mentally to ourselves) that if you are born gay/bisexual/lesbian you have the choice to:
- Admit it and be made fun of horribly
- Build a tough shell and let no one inside of you.
It was very emotional to sit there and here him talk about his childhood because it was pretty simple to how life is today. His high school days were very rough and he said that he built a tough shell and let no one in until one day when he blew up. He said that was the “end of the beginning of his life – but also the beginning of hell” and it was pretty sad.
But this is just to tell my fellow homosexuals that we all know that life is hard and people are still very ignorant, but from his story it just proves how much the American way of acceptance has grew and changed. There is still a lot of homophobia, but it is much better than it used to be. It’s just getting better such that for the next generation, hopefully all homophobia will be over! Lets hope so because I know I don’t want my nieces and nephews and may grandnieces and grand-nephews to have to have to witness the discrimination that we have today.
Just keep up your end: be who you are and do not be ashamed of who you are. The last thing we want is for it to go downhill and go back down to the hellish beginnings.
Life is only going to get better.
We all may seem like a petty piece to the puzzle of ending homophobia, but if we quit now, then that is one less supporter and one less demonstrator and one less awesome human!
Love who you are and show people that it isn’t bad. Life will get better!